San Siro – the cathedral of football
Today we’re visiting one of the most famous sporting venues in Europe, the San Siro stadium in Milan, Italy. This recording was taken during Inter Milan vs. Lazio in December 2017, a freezing night inside this incredible impressive “cathedral of football”, close to an 80,000 sellout.
The most striking sonic aspect is the coordination of chanting coming from the ultras in the curva at one end of the stadium – designated chant leaders drive the chanting, which goes from relative silence to booming roars in just one second.
Towards the end of the recording, a roar goes up as the Inter fans believe they’ve won a penalty – the referee consults video evidence and turns down their claim.
Consequently, the recording ends with a mass chorus of “schemo!” (“idiot”) aimed at the referee. For those interested, the game finished 0-0.
City version:
Long-standing contributor Andy Lyon took on the San Siro recording to create this dreamlike experience of the cathedral of football:
“The approach I took was to create three live recordings in Sensomusic Usine Hollyhock 3 using parts of the recording processed the joggle sampler and a variety of effects
– Mangled Verb and Blackhole;
– Octavox, Ultratap, Blackhole, h3000 factory delay;
– Palindrome, Blackhole h949 dual harmoniser;
– Grain cloud sampler, h949 dual harmoniser, groove slicer.
The joggle sampler has a speed control (-400% – 400%) and I’ve used a MIDI controller to start / stop the sample and alter the speed during the recording.
I’ve then used the start of the original recording layered against orchestration and bass to create a contrast and change the feel. The three live recordings are then substituted for the original recording to create the track.”
Memory version: